Calgary film festival unveils lineup that is eclectic and full of sexy offerings (with gallery)

Eric Volmers, Calgary Herald09.04.2013

Controversial film Blue is the Warmest Colour, a Palme d’Or winner at Cannes this year, will screen at the Calgary International Film Festival.
Courtesy, Calgary International Film Festival.

Calgary International Film Festival director Stephen Schroeder speaks at the official launch event for this year's festival at Downtown Foods on Thursday.Gavin Young
/ Calgary Herald

The Alberta-shot comedy, The Right Kind of Wrong, will close the Calgary International Film Festival.
Courtesy, Calgary International Film Festival.

Adore, starring Robin Wright and Naomi Watts, will screen at the Calgary International Film Festival.
Courtesy, Calgary International Film Festival.

Gabrielle, a Quebec drama, is one of the indie Canadian films at the Calgary International Film Festival.
Courtesy, Calgary International Film Festival.

Billy Bob Thornton stars in Parkland, a drama about the JFK assassination and one of the few mainstream films this year at the Calgary International Film Festival.
Courtesy, Calgary International Film FestivalClaire Folger

Eega, an Indian film about a man who avenges his death by coming back to earth as a fly. It is the Black Carpet gala at the Calgary International Film Festival.
Courtesy, Calgary International Film Festival.

Calgary International Film Festival

The Last Ocean is the Green Gala at the Calgary International Film Festival.
Courtesy, Calgary International Film Festival.

Don McKellar's The Grand Seduction is the opening film at the Calgary International Film Festival.
Courtesy, Calgary International Film Festival.Marlène Gélineau Payette
/ Marlène Gélineau Payette / MAX FILMS

The Calgary International Film Festival will present, Comrade Kim Goes Flying, which is surely the first screening of a North Korean film in its history.
Courtesy, Calgary International Film Festival.

Detecting a coherent thread or theme in a film festival is never an easy task, no matter how many times a lazy journalist might ask programmers to provide one.

But even a cursory glance at the lineup for the 14th annual Calgary International Film Festival, revealed Thursday at Downtown Foods in Calgary, suggests that filmmakers the world over continue to be obsessed with a familiar topic: Sex ... and lots of it.

Obviously not all, or even necessarily the majority, of the nearly 200 films that will screen from Sept. 19 to 29 in downtown Calgary deal with this subject. As with most festival lineups, it is an eclectic list that includes every genre imaginable: Shorts, documentaries, family films, a return of the “music on film” series, low-budget local entries, Canadian and American indie films and a new program, dubbed Masters, that celebrates some of the world’s greatest directors. Meanwhile, The Discovery Program, a distant cousin of the Mavericks competition the festival launched in 2009, will award $2,500 each to the best narrative and documentary by a first-time director. More than 30 films are eligible for the prize this year.

Still, while there is a certainly a good deal of variety, an argument could be made that many of the heavy-hitters this year deal in some way or another with carnal delights.

“Every year, something rises to the forefront and it is like the classic zeitgeist idea,” says Bruce Fletcher, director of programming, in an interview from his home in California. “Some years it’s obvious. You know, post-9/11 there was a certain type of film ... But, you’re right, there was a lot of sexy films at Cannes this year. That is very true. So, by the nature of us showing the best films of the year, we get loaded down.”

“But that’s ... OK,” he adds carefully.

Fletcher’s reluctance to sum up a year’s worth of programming in such a simplistic manner is understandable. But it’s important to note that the films dealing with sensual matters are certainly not all tawdry.

They are funny, touching, shocking, dramatic, campy, thrilling and occasionally all of the above.

Canadians weigh in with fare such as Toronto filmmaker Jeremy Lanlonde’s self-explanatory comedy Sex After Kids. The Quebecois film Gabrielle, by director Louise Archambault, is a drama about a developmentally challenged young woman searching for sexual freedom while living in a group home. The Manor is a documentary that chronicles the family drama that comes with running a strip club in small-town Ontario. The Right Kind of Wrong, which will screen as the closing gala on Sept. 29, is an Alberta-shot comedy based on an American book called Sex & Sunsets.

Some provocative films that premièred at Cannes will be on the list this year as well, including two of the more sensual offerings that screened at the renowned French festival. Young & Beautiful is a boundary-pushing French film about a teenager who loses her virginity and then chooses a life of prostitution. It was nominated for the prestigious Palme d’Or, but lost to Blue is the Warmest Colour, another French drama screening in Calgary that Variety recently proclaimed contained the “most explosively graphic lesbian sex scenes in recent memory.”

The Australian/French co-production Adore, the English-language debut by French director Anne Fontaine, is another taboo-breaker about two mothers played by Naomi Watts and Robin Wright who enter into sexual relationships with each other’s hunky sons.

The reliably provocative British director Peter Greenaway’s new work, Goltzius and the Pelican Company, is about a 16th Century Dutch printer who produces an explicit book of erotically-charged stories from the Old Testament.

Of course, trying to lump films together thematically in a festival that is designed to be eclectic is a bit of a fool’s errand. If sexy films do seem to pop up more this year than in the past, Fletcher insists it was not a conscious decision by him or his programming team, who pored over roughly 1,300 entries this year.

If there is a thread, it’s that they are all, well, good.

“We’re just looking for good stories that are told in new and interesting ways that translate beyond the culture or the demography or milieu that they come from,” Fletcher said. “We want to take you to places around the world and introduce you to other people’s lives as you sit at Eau Claire and the Globe. Our job is to provide a little window through fiction and documentary into a different kind of film reality than what we’re usually presented with.”Among the films to be screened at the festival’s new auteur-focused Masters program are Greenaway’s Goltzius ..., Japanese director Hirokazu Koreeda’s Like Father Like Son, Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci’s Me and You and a screening of Federico Fellini’s 1973 classic Amacord.

Works from these masters will sit alongside entries from local filmmakers. Remember is a Christian-leaning dystopian sci-fi shot for $4,000 by a father-son team from Airdrie. Common Chord is a family film shot in Lethbridge. Oilsands Karaoke, a hit at Hot Docs in Toronto, is documentary based around a singing contest in Fort McMurray.

That film will be one of many with an environmental bent, including this year’s Green gala The Last Ocean. Both that film and Antarctica: A Year on Ice were shot by New Zealand filmmakers and deal with the frozen continent.

Having two films about Antarctica nicely fits into the festival’s mandate of offering stories from places not necessarily known for its cinematic output. This year, that includes what must be the festival’s first film from North Korea (Comrade Kim Goes Flying) and offerings from Latvia (Mother, I Love You) and Senegal (Tall as the Baobab Tree).

Which is not to say the festival is only offering challenging, left-of-the-dial fare. Peter Landesman’s Parkland is a star-studded drama based around the JFK assassination and starring Billy Bob Thornton, Zac Efron and Paul Giamatti. This year’s Black Carpet gala is the Indian eega, a (relatively speaking) high-budget horror film about a man reincarnated as a housefly who wreaks havoc on those who murdered him.

This year, both the opening and closing galas are cheery Canadian comedies. Closing film The Right Kind of Wrong, shot in Alberta, stars True Blood’s Ryan Kwanten, Catherine O’Hara and Sara Canning. East Coast comedy the Grand Seduction kicks things off with a gala on Sept. 19 at the Jubilee Auditorium. Gordon Pinsent and director Don McKellar are expected to walk the red carpet.

It all makes for a festival that is both eclectic in a “something-for-everyone” kind of way, but also streamlined for quality.

“It’s about forming a trust relationship with the audience and getting them to understand that if we’re playing it, we’re selective enough that there’s a pretty good chance that if they are at all interested they are going to like it,” Fletcher says. “There’s good chance if they’re not interested, they are going to like it anyways. With the selection process, we rejected two great film festivals. I’m not kidding when I say that. We sent out rejection letters the other day to at least 60 feature-length films that I would have no problem presenting in Calgary. The selections are really, really strong.”

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Calgary film festival unveils lineup that is eclectic and full of sexy offerings (with gallery)